In the thick of the COVID 19 pandemic in the year 2020, mums all around the globe were doing whatever it took to get through the day with their sanity intact due to being isolated at home with their families, twenty four seven.

A year that was tough on us all, especially on individuals mental health, I was able to use some of my time productively to finally start tapping away on the keyboard about my own struggles with the deterioration of my mental health since becoming a mum.

I had been telling my husband for some time now that I wanted to write a book. He’d always have a chuckle and be eager to hear about the next spontaneous goal I had in mind. I elaborated further and told him that I wanted to share not just mine but our life to the world. That I wanted to write a raw and unedited memoir of what motherhood can really be like and for some mothers including myself, how your mental health can be effected for the worst and how that might look or feel so they know they are not alone.

The plus about being an anxious over thinker is that I had literally written “The 3 M’s” in my head over and over again before I even started physically writing it. One day I just woke up, planted my butt on the couch, armed with a coffee and laptop, and my fingers started typing without me even thinking about it.

Everything I wanted to share and express was already circling around and around in my mind just waiting for that perfect moment to be finally freed. Things I had never spoken aloud or shared even with the people closest to me were finally out in the open and even if no one else read it, it felt in some way therapeutic to get it all off my chest.

After just two days of tapping away I had the main substance of my book completed. I started to share snippets with close friends and the feedback I was getting in return blew me way. I thought ‘wait a minute, maybe this mum could write a book?’ I do remember English being one of my preferred lessons in my later years of schooling and strangely enough I still have a handful of those creative pieces that I’d written only a few years ago. Who am I kidding, scarily enough it’s actually decades ago now.

My motivation went through ebbs and flows over the next couple of months, adding chapters, removing others. I reread over the pages constantly to see if I was missing anything and before I knew it I was like dam girl, you did it! You wrote a bloody book. **high five**

I thought if anything was to come out of my hard work it would be to get my husband to read what I had written so he could relive the past five years through my eyes and understand just how I was feeling at times. To my surprise he slowly chipped away a page at a time and was super supportive and opened to share our story with the world. This meant so much to me and I can honestly say it kick started our relationship to head in a better direction, a direction involving consistent communication and an understanding of each other that we never had before.

It was from that moment with the support from my husband and loved ones that I took a leap of faith and invested in the self-publishing of my first book. See, I never imagined my little idea of sharing my story would ever eventuate much past being an idea and then out of nowhere here I was about to openly disclose to perfect strangers things I had kept in the closet under lock and key for so long. It was terrifying.

The self-publishing process seemed very daunting to begin with however every single member of the Tellwell team was a delight to work with. The company’s knowledge and encouragement along the way was reassurance that I was on the right track to make this idea into a reality.

Every day has been nerve racking since the initial release of the book, even having people I know read the book, maybe even more so having those people read it as they know my family personally but know very little about the things we’ve kept behind closed doors. I feel this awkwardness when I’m approached by people about the book, being fully aware they know some seriously personal shit about me now. It’s confronting to say the least.

I am currently awaiting reviews from avid readers whose passion is to read books. I am quite frankly shitting myself!! I check my emails constantly waiting to see if there are any updates. How will others take my honesty and style of writing? There is no stone unturned in between those pages and this is feeling like it’s make or break on how the world will react to the memoir that is “The 3 M’s – Motherhood, Marriage & Mental Health”.

As mums we wear so many different hats, the cook, the cleaner, the snack bitch, the chauffeur, the referee plus many, many more. However I can now proudly add ‘The Indie Author’ to my repertoire and one day my kids might just say ‘Hey, guess what? My mum wrote a book!’